


when westward turn my eyes

by hitlikehammers



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Background Relationships, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Love Conquers All, M/M, Mentioned Kíli/Tauriel, Sappy, Schmoop, Self-Indulgent Canon Revision, The Heart of Thorin Oakenshield, The Magical Mystical Power of Love, True Love, Vague and Fully-Cognizant Bastardizations of Canon in the Service of Schmoopy Plots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 06:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2954978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo suspects that he'll never quite know how he got here.</p><p>He’ll only just be grateful that got here’s what he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when westward turn my eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RC_McLachlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan/gifts).



> For the lovely, inimitable, wondrous, fabulous, fan-fucking-tastic [RC_McLachlan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan): never let it be said I don't fulfill a prompt (this being the one you offered about Bilbo reflecting on what is, versus what might have been *cough*canon*cough*) as promised... just let it definitely be said that I might take a really long fucking time in doing it. This is pure and unadulterated _sap_ , lovely, but hell: why not, right? I hope it's to your liking. Just like, brush your teeth afterward, so it doesn't rot anything <333

It shouldn’t strike him like it does. It shouldn’t shake him from the soles of his feet to the curls on his head every time as if he’s never seen the likes of it before, as if he still can’t make sense of it.

It shouldn’t, really. None of this should.

Yet still: he marvels.

He thinks of his mother, here, more often than most other things that might occupy his mind. More often than anything, really, save his own good fortune and the impossibility of the life he leads. But he thinks about his mother, among all the green of growing and the golden-hues of the sun where it streams down and catches fresh water, honey on still pools, and Bilbo won’t pretend his stomach doesn’t rumble just a touch—he still misses a _proper_ second breakfast, but he’s managed to sell his kin, here, on elevenses, and he’ll take that trade, he most certainly will take that trade.

But yes, here. Here, in this little cove, high enough that he’s a touch breathless from more than just the sight of it, for the climb—in this space carved just for him, gifted wholeheartedly and without reserve to invite his roots to grasp firm inside the walls of stone: here, Bilbo thinks often on Belladonna Took.

Perhaps because she figures so keenly into the other places his mind visits among the soft grass, the young sproutlings just venturing forth among sturdier flora, holding them firm, letting them find their way in safety, teaching the tendrils to toddle, to reach toward sunlight on their own tender feet. Because of course Bilbo could never have imagined he’d end up here—could never have imagined here, as a place, as a truth in his heart so deeply held: not in his wildest childhood imaginings. Not even, he suspects, in his mother’s sense of wanderlust, her reckless and winsome abandon.

That here is a reality, that now is his home: Bilbo still can’t swallow around it, sometimes. It still seems too big, too improbable to fathom, let alone to touch, or to hold. 

And _yet_.

He sits, and lets his feet brush the surface of the tiny brook carved low into stone—cool, brisk, a soft song around the tumble of his heart as he fingers the glimmering sheen of the buttons on his waistcoat, capturing the shafts of light that piece in and glow vast, unafraid of the dim, stretching to offer life in the dark; he turns the fastens, lets the sun glance off the edges as he thinks, as he remembers and tries to draw the line from the first moments to these in the present: tries to see the thread that led them hence.

He’s been trying for years. He holds hope that one day, he’ll see it plain. 

It had been a fierce and jealous love, Balin had said, that had taken Thorin in those dark days after the dragon had fallen. And in turn, it had taken more time than Bilbo likes to admit for him to realize that _that_ had been the key: to harness the fierceness, but to render jealousy obsolete.

He still doesn’t know where the words came from—perhaps some enchantment in those halls, amidst all that worthless treasure trying to smother the only treasure that truly _mattered_ : Bilbo doesn’t know how he managed the words, how he found the right phrases to offer, to piece through the mist, the madness. Bilbo doesn’t think he’ll ever know for certain. 

_There is a deep magic woven into what it means to love, dear one,_ his mother used to tell him, soft and deep and true. _We cannot see it, or control it, but it shakes at the foundations of the world, and woe betide the fool who can’t respect its power._

And betide, woe certainly had: and Bilbo had shook on the inside, and a bit on the out as he’d braved those cavernous halls, as he’d been heedless of banishment and rage, as he’d dismissed the damnation of the one he held most dear, the cries of betrayal partly-deserved: Bilbo’s heart had grown too heavy to pound the way it was, and yet it _was_ , and breaths were scarce, but his blood sang bold against the veins—an elegy, perhaps.

Or some hymn of hope.

 _If you come across it,_ his mother’s voice had whispered, had echoed not off the golden walls and floors but inside his bones, swift and certain: _if you feel it dance inside your blood, hold it fast, and use it only for beauty, my love._

 _Foul things await those who treat it wrong_.

And fooling a dragon hadn’t hurt so hard in his chest, but nor had it spurred the words so clean, so full of all his heart and need. Bilbo didn’t bother telling Thorin that he’d changed, didn’t bother drawing the parallels that he’d already spoken, that others had made to no good end—no, Bilbo had reached as far as he could with the hands that he had, and the fire in his blood, and wished beyond all reason that his mother was as wise as she was brave.

And beyond all reason, he’d gotten close enough, he’d stretched that extra bit more: he’d made contact. 

His mouth on Thorin’s had tasted of agony, and bitter loss, and by rights he should have pulled back, he should have.

He didn’t, though. He wouldn’t.

Won’t _ever_.

And they don’t forestall all bloodshed. Dáin falls. Many of the Lake-men lose their lives. Elvish eyes stare blank to the heavens. The mountain reeks of orc as the hides of the dead splay far. They don’t emerge from folly, from mindless greed, unscathed.

But in the end, they do emerge. In the end, Bard gets more than his share of the gold, and Laketown rises strong again; Thranduil’s precious gems are restored, if not to the rightful place of the neck they once graced, than at least as a balm of sorts to the weary soul left behind: in return, the Arkenstone passes back to Dwarvish hands. The Heart of the Mountain restored.

For better or worse.

And it is the Heart of the Mountain, yes; but the Heart of Thorin, too—Bilbo had been right in that, had seen it and called it for what it was before him. Yet Thorin, beyond all reason, beyond all hope or design: Thorin had found heart above it, _outside_ of it, in the interim. Thorin, in those catacombs for the gold-mad and soul-lost, had not wrung Bilbo with hateful hands or thrown him to his doom in blind rage as he might have, no—Thorin had heard Bilbo speak _sister-sons_ and _brothers-at-arms_ , had heard Bilbo speak of honor and loyalty, courage and strength and willing hearts, aching hearts, offered hearts that wanted no gems, no gold, no crowns. That wanted nothing, save to have. To hold. To be.

To love.

Thorin had heard him. Thorin’s lips on his own had tasted of bitterness, at first, yes, but Bilbo had pressed closer, hoped harder—salt on his mouth, tears. Regret.

And then the softest hint of sweet: a promise.

So it was that the same intensity, the same devotion with which Thorin had watched the stone was turned elsewhere, yet honed now with a newfound clarity, a presence of self; Thorin cherished _Bilbo_ with the same unflagging need, but none of the covetous wrath, for it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t needed.

 _Only for beauty, my love_.

Because Belladonna Took had been wise beyond her reach; because Bilbo had given himself, had extended his hand with no eye toward gain—BIlbo had offered his own heart to serve for them both, and the dance in his blood had spanned the space of two chests, had drummed a rhythm to keep and lift them both, and Thorin had blinked away the fever, the fog in his mind; Bilbo’s love, freely given, had spurred the unthinkable, had reawakened an honorable soul, had unearthed Thorin’s own reckless desire alongside a steadfast sort of rapture, and it had not mended all wounds, nor scaled all walls or healed all rifts—it had not delivered them from the scars they’d need to tend. But where nothing else had touched him, this had been enough.

A magic to it, indeed.

Bilbo’s hand slips to his own chest, where warmth is growing, a tingling sensation that never fails to turn his lips upward when it comes: he smiles, and his toes wriggle joyfully in the waters of the tiny stream below and he’ll never know how he got here.

He’ll only just be grateful that got here’s what he did.

“He is away,” Bilbo speaks, doesn’t turn. “Helping his mother, the Lady Dís.” 

He hadn’t heard the approach of the presence that he senses now, behind him, which in itself reveals the identity of Tauriel more clearly than any other indication. She is in the Mountain often enough, and she comes here to ease a want for growing things—she’s wondered at his refuge, in this space, at how he’s shepherded the green against hard gravel, but Bilbo doesn’t quite see it so starkly in contrast: it is all of it the earth, after all. 

“There are some who still have not learned that the Mountain is reclaimed,” Bilbo smiles when she draws near, when he can see her bright eyes and kind face. “That there is a home to return to, should they wish it.” 

And Bilbo doesn’t spend more time than he must, dwelling on the could-have-beens, mulling over all that may have been lost, had love not won the day those years ago, with war upon the threshold. He doesn’t spend more time than he must, but time must still be spent, and it makes him all the more grateful that the blood spilled that day was stemmed, that the losses were few by comparison with what might have come: that his company, his friends, the family he’s found and loved so deeply, here, had been spared.

And that Kíli, dear Kíli, still breathes to aid his mother, his people; that Kíli can gaze upon the Lady Tauriel with his heart in his eyes, and the good Captain can smile at him with the radiance of the Eldar—and if they are slow to speak a name to what they may or may not have, may or may not know: they have time.

Bilbo reminds himself of this, reminds his heart of this: they _all_ have time.

“They’d planned to return within the fortnight,” Bilbo tells her. “He’ll be glad to see you, should you wish to stay a while.”

“I’ll be needed back in the Greenwood,” Tauriel nods, grateful even in declining to stay—she is still unfettered inside the Mountain, even with Kíli at her side; without him, she is as strong as she ever holds, capable and battle-honed and brave as any soul, but her hands go to the stone in the pocket at her hip, and Bilbo knows she traces the runes for comfort, for steadiness without the sky to moor her. 

“You know, by now,” Bilbo says softly, nodding to her hidden wrist: “what the language means to any Dwarf.”

Tauriel’s hand stills, then draws the runestone out to gleam against improbable light. 

“It becomes you,” Bilbo says, rather fondly, wholly truthful, and she smiles, ever-slow.

“I could say to you the very same.” 

Tauriel eyes him knowingly, gaze lingering on his garments, on the embellishments of the fastenings with particular significance, and in moments such as these Bilbo is reminded of the wide world, and the agelessness of Elves, and how to this graceful being, he is in many ways but a child himself.

He smiles, though, even if he ducks his head; the direction of her does not bother him, merely robs him of his breath at a moment’s notice, still, when he thinks upon what was done, what was earned once the fields were cleared and the blood had been dried.

His hands go back to the buttons, toying with their shape, trying to reconcile the ordinary function with extraordinary worth: he can feel the skip of his heart beneath the layers— disbelieving, even now.

Tauriel’s head turns toward the entryway, attention piqued before Bilbo could hope to even notice whatever she hears, whatever she sees: she smiles at him once more before her fingers run across the carvings on the stone she holds, before her smile turns to that token, and the host of things it means.

“It was a promise,” she murmurs. “I will keep it.”

Bilbo doesn’t know what the stone says, precisely, but he can imagine. 

“Give him,” she starts, a bit halting, still uneven in this: “Give him my love?”

Bilbo nods. “Until you can give it yourself,” he assures her, and it’s only then that he begins to detect the padding of hurried footsteps approaching—the impetus for Tauriel’s impending retreat.

“ _Novaer_ ,” he bids her; “ _Hiril vuin_.”

She offers him a gilded smile that settles, pride-warm in his belly, before she takes her leave: “You are _improving_ , Master Baggins!”

And she is gone, and Bilbo lets his eyes slide closed as he feels it: the approach like a physical push, the proximity of the half of him that he’s always somehow attuned to, like a current, like a thread tied at the center of his chest where they’re joined.

Thorin had been overseeing new excavations long into the night, and Bilbo hadn’t the heart to wake him when he’d risen before dawnbreak himself—he should have, though. 

He should have, because the risk in an empty bedside, in empty arms in the night is this, the King Under the Mountain: wide-eyed and face pale, unhesitant and yet somehow reluctant to touch all at once as he rushes, then hovers at Bilbo’s side, needing to know him as more than a figment, but not wishing to shatter the vision, if indeed it’s nothing more.

Bilbo relieves him of the burden of choice, of loss, and reaches, grasps at Thorin’s arms and lets him fall heavy into Bilbo’s own, lets him tuck up against Bilbo’s chest and breathe. 

Just breathe.

“Dreams again, love?” Bilbo whispers, mouth at the crown of Thorin’s head, teasing the sleep-mussed strands of his hair.

“You were stricken down,” Thorin murmurs, clutching Bilbo ever-closer to compensate the falter in his words. “I could not reach you.” And Thorin’s voice reverberates through Bilbo’s body, a comfort; but when it cracks, it cuts Bilbo down the middle, in kind: “The _ice_ —”

“You’ve seen it before,” Bilbo whispers, soothes as best he can, because he’s learned across time, across so much time that Thorin can’t be reasoned with when it comes to these terrors in the dark, these predictions of a future that never came for them, that was evaded if only just—he cannot be calmed, his pain cannot be stayed with logic. He has to know the end he may have wrought, had things gone differently. Had Bilbo not come to him. Had it not been enough to hear the words spoken, those many years ago.

Even now, Thorin feels the need to offer penance. And though Bilbo disagrees, it does nothing to change that need. 

So Bilbo’s long since learned that all he can do to help, all he can offer to meet that spear of self-loathing and recrimination is to help him bring it closure—help him cut it short where it cannot be stilled altogether.

“You’ve watched it play to the finish. We make peace before the end, we part well,” Bilbo strokes his hand across Thorin’s head, to his shoulders, pressing him tighter to his chest and Thorin goes willingly, arching closer to the beating there that grounds him, that helps him come back to the now.

“We parted well,” Bilbo promises, kissing light to Thorin’s temple; “if heartbroken, for my own part.”

And Thorin’s breath stills for a moment—for a long stretch of them before it gives way, before he exhales, long and tremulous but it is the last shudder of a crumbling world that needed most desperately to fall. He reaches, as he comes back to himself, as he finds his footing again; he reaches, traces the outline of the buttons on Bilbo’s jacket, delicate and careful before he pays them no further mind in themselves, before he flattens his palm against the middle of Bilbo’s chest and meets his lover’s eyes. And Bilbo takes that hand and covers it, whole as he can, and stares straight back: a vow in itself.

Because it had been a risk, to go after Thorin all those years ago. It had been foolish and he’d be courting ruin to follow the trail of madness, of blindness, of a fever that pervaded, that overcame all things: it had been folly, it had been useless, and yet Bilbo had followed anyway, had offered a heart he hadn’t quite understood, just then, and hoped until the breaking of the world that it would suffice.

It had been a risk.

And when they’d emerged from the havoc wreaked, he’d seen Thorin, and felt the heart he’d offered swell far past the size of Bilbo’s own chest, because it’d _had_ been enough, beyond all reason. It had been enough, just on its own.

But then the Arkenstone had returned.

And Bilbo doesn’t regret the worry, the clench of fear in him when that gem had found its way back to them: when it was offered in even exchange, save that no exchange could be even in all that was done, all that was lost, and all that was only _nearly_ lost, though only just barely saved. Bilbo doesn’t regret the worry.

But he is grateful—more than—that it had proved unfounded, in the end.

The sun will catch the fastens on his clothes at certain angles; candlelight will dance upon the spectrum of the shards, the careful inlays of the jewel as it lives now, piece by piece, given wholly: the fabled Arkenstone, the heart of Thorin, broken into pieces in order that Bilbo might take it, might hold it, might accept it as an offering.

And of course there’s not a damned garment he owns, now, that doesn’t have a touch of it sewn it, or attached just so—Thorin’s clear-headed, yes, but that never meant he wasn’t still keen to make clear what was his. 

But the pendant at the center of Bilbo’s chest that pushes close with every breath he takes, draped dear alongside a ring of comparatively little consequence: it never leaves his neck. Because Bilbo understands what his beloved meant then, and what it means now, to have given the Heart of the Mountain, of a People, of one person who Bilbo has come to hold high and close and dear above all others: Bilbo understands what was intended when Thorin smashed that thrice-damned jewel into fragments but saved every piece—not to hoard, not to crave, not to use ill, to have learned nothing from the near loss of _everything_ , no.

He saved every piece, so as to give. To hope. To be reminded with every breath of the trials, the struggles, the near-misses and the improbable joy that is here, now, when it may not have been.

A celebration and a warning. The broken pieces, carried as a choice, an affirmation that light could come from dark.

That love performed a magic of its own, when used for _beauty_.

To this day, Bilbo doesn’t think Thorin ever expected that Bilbo would not only take the heart that was given, but that he’d put it back to rights—Bilbo is nearly certain, in fact, that Thorin never expected to know his own heart as whole again, and that makes the offer of it all the more precious: a transformation wrought that could never have been predicted, that even the Wizards could not have foreseen.

But Bilbo likes to think he’s done his best to hold the heart of Thorin Oakenshield, to show it care beyond the chains of lifeless stone. He likes to think that they’ve grown together within it, around it. He likes to think his own heart’s made a worthy exchange for the warmth, for the heat, for the wonder: for the sense of belonging that lives in Bilbo’s chest where the comfort that once dwelled there has long paled in comparison.

And Thorin presses lips to the steady pulse of that warmth, and Bilbo smiles softly when his eyes catch the glittering play of the small sliver at his breast of the Arkenstone—it’s magic repurposed, its curse somehow reversed—as it catches the rocks and the green, as it refracts to paint a spectrum on the trunk of a fauntling tree: that acorn, the token from Beorn—a poor prize to take back to the Shire, perhaps, but just one among a kingly spread of riches, here, where his own heart’s made its home.

And Bilbo had been right, of course; whether he’d envisioned this or something wholly different—the seed had grown: thick bark and tender branches, strong but yielding; a shield and a hearth, somehow, and everytime he looks to the ever-broadening sapling that came of it, he remembers. He remembers, and he cannot believe the fortune that’s followed him. He cannot possibly believe his own luck.

Because Bilbo Baggins—he understands it now, understands that he was never on a quest away from the home he’d held from birth. No: Bilbo Baggins had set out on a quest to find the haven he was _meant_ to know, for the rest of his days: in heart and in body and in soul.

How lucky indeed, then, that he made it _home_.

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/post/106543354457/fic-when-westward-turn-my-eyes-1-1), if ya dig.


End file.
